Allowing Killer Robots for Law Enforcement Would Be a Historic Mistake

THEY VIOLATE ASIMOV'S THIRD LAW OF ROBOTICS

Questions about if, when and how to use lethal autonomous weapons are no longer limited to warfare.

Branka Marijan
January 2, 2023

Activists from the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, protest at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, March 21, 2019. 

(Annegret Hilse/REUTERS)


The headline-making vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on November 29 to allow police to use robots to kill people in limited circumstances highlights that the questions of if, when and how to use lethal autonomous weapons systems — a.k.a. “killer robots” powered by artificial intelligence (AI) — are no longer just about the use of robots in warfare. Moreover, San Francisco is not the only municipality wrestling with these questions; the debate will only heat up as new technologies develop. As such, it is urgent that national governments develop policies for domestic law enforcement’s use of remote-controlled and AI-enabled robots and systems.

One week later, San Francisco law makers reversed themselves, after a public outcry, to ban the use of killer robots by the police. Nonetheless, their initial approval crystallized the concerns long held by those who advocate for an international ban on autonomous weapons: namely, that robots that can kill might be put to use not only by militaries in armed conflicts but also by law enforcement and border agencies in peacetime.

Indeed, robots have already been used by police to kill. In an apparent first, in 2016, the Dallas police used the Remotec F5A bomb disposal robot to kill Micah Xavier Johnson, a former US Army reservist, who fatally shot five police officers and wounded seven others. The robot delivered the plastic explosive C4 to an area where the shooter was hiding, ultimately killing him. Police use of robots has grown in less dramatic ways as well, as robots are deployed for varied purposes, such as handing out speeding tickets or surveillance.

So far, the use of robots by police, including the proposed use by the San Francisco police, is through remote operation and thus under human control. Some robots, such as Xavier, the autonomous wheeled vehicle used in Singapore, are primarily used for surveillance, but nevertheless use “deep convolutional neural networks and software logics” to process images of infractions.

Police departments elsewhere around the world have also been acquiring drones. In the United States alone, some 1,172 police departments are now using drones. Given rapid advances in AI, it’s likely that more of these systems will have greater autonomous capabilities and be used to provide faster analysis in crisis situations.

While most of these robots are unarmed, many can be weaponized. Axon, the maker of the Taser electroshock weapon, proposed equipping drones with Tasers and cameras. The company ultimately decided to reverse itself but not before the majority of its AI Ethics board resigned in protest. In the industry, approaches vary. Boston Dynamics recently published an open letter stating it will not weaponize its robots. Other manufacturers, such as Ghost Robotics, allow customers to mount guns on their machines.

Even companies opposed to the weaponization of their robots and systems can only do so much. It’s ultimately up to policy makers at the national and international levels to try to prevent the most egregious weaponization. As advancements in AI accelerate and more autonomous capabilities emerge, the need for this policy will become even more pressing.

The appeal of using robots for policing and warfare is obvious: robots can be used for repetitive or dangerous tasks. Defending the police use of killer robots, Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review and a contributing writer with Politico Magazine, posits that critics have been influenced by dystopic sci-fi scenarios and are all too willing to send others into harm’s way.

This argument echoes one heard in international fora on this question, which is that such systems could save soldiers’ and even civilians’ lives. But what Lowry and other proponents of lethal robots overlook are the wider impacts on particular communities, such as racialized ones, and developing countries. Avoiding the slippery slope of escalation when allowing the technology in certain circumstances is a crucial challenge.

The net result is that already over-policed communities, such as Black and Brown ones, face the prospect of being further surveilled by robotic systems. Saving police officers’ lives is important, to be sure. But is the deployment of killer robots the only way to reduce the risks faced by front-line officers? What about the risks of accidents and errors? And there’s the fundamental question of whether we want to live in societies with swarms of drones patrolling our streets.

Police departments are currently discussing the uses of killer robots in extreme circumstances only. But as we have seen in past uses of technology for policing, use scenarios will not be constrained for long. Indeed, small infractions and protests have in the past led to police using technology originally developed for battlefields. Consider, for example, the use of the Predator B drone, known as the Reaper, to surveil protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. While these drones are unarmed, their use in an American city, in response to protests against racially motivated policing, was jarring.

Technological advancements may well have their place in policing. But killer robots are not the answer. They would take us down a dystopian path that most citizens of democracies would much rather avoid. That is not science fiction, but rather the reality - if governance does keep pace with technological advancement.

A version of this article appeared in Newsweek.

The opinions expressed in this article/multimedia are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of CIGI or its Board of Directors.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Branka Marijan

Branka Marijan is a senior researcher at Project Ploughshares, where she leads research on the military and security implication of emerging technologies.

The Ethics of Automated Warfare and Artificial Intelligence

Bessma MomaniAaron ShullJean-François BélangerRebecca CrootofBranka MarijanEleonore PauwelsJames RogersFrank SauerToby WalshAlex Wilner

November 28, 2022

The most complex international governance challenges surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) today involve its defence and security applications — from killer swarms of drones to the computer-assisted enhancement of military command-and-control processes. The contributions to this essay series emerged from discussions at a webinar series exploring the ethics of AI and automated warfare hosted by the University of Waterloo’s AI Institute.

Introduction: The Ethics of Automated Warfare and AI
Bessma Momani, Aaron Shull, Jean-François Bélanger

AI and the Future of Deterrence: Promises and Pitfalls
Alex Wilner

The Third Drone Age: Visions Out to 2040
James Rogers

Civilian Data in Cyberconflict: Legal and Geostrategic Considerations
Eleonore Pauwels

AI and the Actual IHL Accountability Gap
Rebecca Crootof

Autonomous Weapons: The False Promise of Civilian Protection
Branka Marijan

Autonomy in Weapons Systems and the Struggle for Regulation
Frank Sauer

The Problem with Artificial (General) Intelligence in Warfare
Toby Walsh

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Bessma Momani

CIGI Senior Fellow Bessma Momani has a Ph.D. in political science with a focus on international political economy and is full professor and assistant vice‑president, research and international at the University of Waterloo.
Aaron Shull

Aaron Shull is the managing director and general counsel at CIGI. He is a senior legal executive and is recognized as a leading expert on complex issues at the intersection of public policy, emerging technology, cybersecurity, privacy and data protection.
Jean-François Bélanger

Jean-François Bélanger is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo working with Bessma Momani on questions of cybersecurity and populism.
Rebecca Crootof

Rebecca Crootof is an associate professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. Her primary areas of research include technology law, international law and torts.
Branka Marijan

Branka Marijan is a senior researcher at Project Ploughshares, where she leads research on the military and security implication of emerging technologies.
Eleonore Pauwels

Eleonore Pauwels is an international expert in the security, societal and governance implications generated by the convergence of artificial intelligence with other dual-use technologies, including cybersecurity, genomics and neurotechnologies.
James Rogers

James Rogers is the DIAS Associate Professor in War Studies within the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, a non-resident senior fellow within the Cornell Tech Policy Lab at Cornell University and an associate fellow at LSE IDEAS within the London School of Economics.
Frank Sauer

Frank Sauer is the head of research at the Metis Institute for Strategy and Foresight and a senior research fellow at the Bundeswehr University in Munich.
Toby Walsh

Toby Walsh is an Australian Research Council laureate fellow and scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales.
Alex Wilner

Alex Wilner is an associate professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, and the director of the Infrastructure Protection and International Security program.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for KILLER ROBOTS 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-2005-paper-gothic-capitalism-full.html

A mass exodus from Christianity is underway in America. Here’s why.

It’s less about hot-button topics like abortion and gay marriage and more about the Cold Warand the internet.

Grid; Ezra Acayan/ Getty Images

Suzette Lohmeyer, Senior Editor,

 and Anna Deen, Data Visualization Reporter

December 17, 2022

While the number of Americans who celebrate Christmas as a cultural holiday is going strong, there has been a shocking rise in the number of people ditching Christianity — what sociologists call “nonverts.”

Pew Research Center estimates that Christians will be a minority of Americans by 2070 if current trends continue.

And it likely will, with the largest percentage of those losing their religion being young adults who are about as old as that REM reference: people around 30 and under.

It’s a kind of “cultural whiplash” from religion to secularism that’s hit the United States much faster than it has other parts of the world, said theology and sociology professor Stephen Bullivant.

Bullivant, a practicing Catholic who teaches at St. Mary’s University in London and the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, spoke to Grid about why Americans are leaving Christianity in droves and the demographics that are seeing the (ahem) ungodliest declines. His new book, “Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America,” came out in the U.S. on Dec. 1.

Young adults are leading the mass exodus

Bullivant made it clear that it’s important not to glom all young adult nonverts as having one big reason for leaving the church. “Each person has a complex story, and we need to recognize the personal journey,” he told Grid. That said, he added, there are larger trends we can examine.

For example, the largest demographic of nonverts, younger adults, will raise their children as “nones” — people from nonreligious families. And while a tiny percentage of nonverts return to religion, nones rarely embrace religion at any point in their lives.

Bullivant noted that it’s not shocking that young adults are the ones leaving at the highest rates. “When people do nonvert,” he said, “they tend to do in their early to mid-20s.”

And to those who dismiss the trend as just young people trying something different who will eventually come back to the church, that is not what the data shows. Not only have the percentages of adults under 30 claiming to have no religion increased dramatically over the past 50 years, other age groups saw rises as well, Bullivant said.

The move toward secularism happened incredibly fast in the U.S.

While the trend toward atheism and agnosticism in Europe has been a slow but steady decline, Bullivant said, the increase in Christians dropping the faith didn’t really take off in the U.S. until the early 2000s, and the decline since then has been steep and quick.

For people who study such trends, there was kind of this feeling in the ’90s that if a rise in secularism hadn’t happened yet in America, there was no reason to think it would. “Even the most dramatic historical examples of religious growth or decline tend to occur over many generations,” said Bullivant. “But then it was as if in the early 2000s, something was released.”

It wasn’t so long ago, when you are talking about as big a culturally religious shift as we’re talking about, he added.

And it’s important to note, said Bullivant, that it wasn’t about an influx of secular immigrants or nones raising throngs of nonreligious babies. It was about Americans deciding they were not tied to any religion. Interestingly, while a third of Americans that identify as nones say they are atheist or agnostic, Bullivant notes in his book, the rest have varying degrees of belief in God — Christian or otherwise.

And the big question: Why now?

Bullivant said that if you look at the big picture of American 20th-century culture, you stop asking, “Why is it happening now?” and start asking, “Why didn’t it happen earlier?” You can’t just blame shifting political views.

“It’s about looking at what happened in the 20th century that dampened down the possibility of being nonreligious — and then what changed?” he asked.

Bullivant said there are three main answers to that question: the Cold War, 9/11 and the internet.

If you compare the Cold War in Europe to the Cold War in the U.S., there was one major difference when it comes to religion. In the U.S., it was very much about Christian America vs. godless communism, whereas in Europe there just wasn’t that religious element.

In Europe, it was OK to explore secularism a bit, he said, whereas in America questioning their faith or going so far as to proclaim they were atheist or agnostic was really not socially acceptable on a political, cultural or religious level.

It’s also about who the atheist and agnostic influencers were in both parts of the world. In the U.K., for example, it was respectable establishment intellectual figures — such as the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. In the United States, said Bullivant, you had people like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who “while fascinating for all sorts of reasons was very easy to depict as someone who had been a communist, who had tried to defect to Moscow and was a divorcee” which all made her sort of a social outcast during a religiously overtoned Cold War.

The generation born after the height of the Cold War — in the early to mid ’80s — didn’t grow up with propaganda and blacklist fears, said Bullivant, so there is a safe space for the idea of a nonreligious life to open up.

When 9/11 happened, Bullivant said, then you have the new atheism with many prominent people coming out and publicly questioning faith in a higher being — such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins — and it becomes OK to reevaluate what you believe, said Bullivant: “They opened up a nonreligious space.”

And of course the internet, Bullivant added. That was happening at about the same time, and it gave people access to communities of people also questioning their faith. Bullivant particularly saw this when interviewing ex-Mormons and ex-evangelicals.

“If you’re raised in small-town Texas or Idaho and everyone you know is some kind of Christian, you’re in a kind of bubble. And then with the internet, you start getting support groups online with thousands of members and that helps erode those bubbles,” he said.

One thing Bullivant said is overemphasized when it comes to examining why people leave the church: shifting cultural values.

As people’s opinions in the U.S. changed on women’s roles in society, abortion and same-sex marriage, it was absolutely difficult for the churches to deal with, said Bullivant. They thought it meant “alienating large segments of people” who didn’t agree with the church’s stances on issues.

But, if you look at the Episcopal Church, which has changed along with the culture, its numbers are tanking, said Bullivant. Churches shifting with the times doesn’t seem to “fill the pews.”

“When Catholics say, ‘The reason young people are leaving is because they disagree with the church on abortion and contraception,’ they do disagree with the church, and abortion and contraception, and gay marriage and all sorts of stuff,” he said. “But it’s very unlikely that if the church changed those positions, or softened them in a pastoral way, that those people wouldn’t leave or that they’d come back or anything like that.”

The rise of secular, rather than religious, cult figures after covid

Interestingly, said Bullivant, historically cataclysmic events — the Civil War, World War II — often trigger religious revivals on the fringe of the mainstream, such as cults. The fact that that hasn’t been apparent with covid, the most recent cataclysmic event, is more evidence of a waning religious mainstream, he said.

The closest recent group that’s come is perhaps the rise of QAnon, he said, but that’s more a secular than a religious movement.

“In the past, Q would be some kind of angel or Virgin Mary or Native American shaman or religious thinker. Q is meant to be more of a civil servant, functionary,” he said, “and the argument is that, well, you need a strong religious center to have wild fringes popping up.”

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

• 
  Suzette Lohmeyer

  Senior Editor

  Suzette Lohmeyer is the senior editor at Grid, where she focuses on daily news.

  suzettelohmeyer
• 
  Anna Deen

  Data Visualization Reporter

  Anna Deen is a data visualization reporter at Grid.

  annadeen2

How rare are deadly winter storms like the one that just hit Buffalo?

The storm could become the next billion-dollar blizzard.

Anna Deen, Data Visualization Reporter, and Dave Levitan, Climate Reporter
December 27, 2022

A National Guard truck drives along snow-covered streets in Buffalo, New York
JOED VIERA/AFP via Getty Images

A winter storm has left Buffalo and the surrounding region in western New York staggering, with at least 30 people dead and rescue and cleanup operations still ongoing on Tuesday. People were found stranded in cars, in massive snowbanks and in homes that have lacked power and heat for days now.

The storm was part of a winter weather system that swept across much of the United States, bringing freezing temperatures even to southern regions unaccustomed to them. With New York officials expecting fatalities to rise and additional snow on the way, it seems likely that this event could crack the list of billion-dollar weather disasters, joining at least 15 others in the country this year alone that collectively killed more than 340 people.

Overall, such disasters have increased dramatically in recent years. Between 1980 and 2021, the U.S. averaged about eight billion-dollar events per year, at a cost of $53.4 billion. But over the last five years alone, that has shot up to almost 18 events per year, at the staggering average cost of $157 billion.

Winter storms, though, are less likely than other natural disasters — like hurricanes or tornado outbreaks — to make the list. On average, less than one winter storm or freeze per year has cracked the billion-dollar threshold since 1980, with no obvious increasing trend in recent years.

Interestingly though, parts of the U.S. that are less accustome to traditional winter impacts are more likely to experience sky-high costs when ice, snow and extreme cold do rear their heads.

For example, the deep freeze that descended across much of the country in early 2021 caused massive disruption in Texas, where millions were left without power and more than 200 people died. Only one winter storm has been anywhere near as costly in recent history: the 1993 “Storm of the Century,” which blanketed virtually the entire East Coast.

There is some indication that such events could be made more likely by the changing climate. The polar vortex, a band of strong winds high over the Arctic that encloses a mass of extremely cold air, occasionally breaks through its far northern bounds and spreads to the south — and some studies suggest that warming will make that more likely. For example, one found that low sea ice extent over the Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia can have a cascading atmospheric effect leading the polar vortex to leak down across North America.

“So the idea would be that even though you have an overall warming trend, you might see an increase in the severity of individual winter weather events in some locations,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Amy Butler has explained.

In Buffalo, a city generally well acquainted with severe winter weather, the sheer scale and ferocity of the storm has combined to make it as deadly an event as the region has seen in recent memory. Climate change is also making precipitation events in general stronger, with a warmer atmosphere capable of holding more moisture, so extreme blizzards — especially around the Great Lakes where “lake effect” snow was already an issue — will likely get more and more common in the coming years.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

• 
  Anna Deen

  Data Visualization Reporter

  Anna Deen is a data visualization reporter at Grid.

  annadeen2
• 
  Dave Levitan

  Climate Reporter

  Dave Levitan is a climate reporter for Grid where he focuses on interconnected stories about climate and science, and politics shaping action around both.

  davelevitan

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Exploring the mathematical universe – connections, contradictions, and kale

The Conversation
January 02, 2023

Shutterstock

Science and maths skills are widely celebrated as keys to economic and technological progress, but abstract mathematics may seem bafflingly far from industrial optimization or medical imaging. Pure mathematics often yields unanticipated applications, but without a time machine to look into the future, how do mathematicians like me choose what to study?

Over Thai noodles, I asked some colleagues what makes a problem interesting, and they offered a slew of suggestions: surprises, contradictions, patterns, exceptions, special cases, connections. These answers might sound quite different, but they all support a view of the mathematical universe as a structure to explore.

In this view, mathematicians are like anatomists learning how a body works, or navigators charting new waters. The questions we ask take many forms, but the most interesting ones are those that help us see the big picture more clearly.

Making maps

Mathematical objects come in many forms. Some of them are probably quite familiar, like numbers and shapes. Others might seem more exotic, like equations, functions and symmetries.

Instead of just naming objects, a mathematicians might ask how some class of objects is organized. Take prime numbers: we know there are infinitely many of them, but we need a structural understanding to work out how frequently they occur or to identify them in an efficient way.


The ‘Ulam spiral’ reveals some structure in the primes. If you arrange the counting numbers in squares spiraling outward, it becomes clear that many prime numbers fall on diagonal lines. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Other good questions explore relationships between apparently different objects. For example, shapes have symmetry, but so do the solutions to some equations.

Classifying objects and finding connections between them help us assemble a coherent map of the mathematical world. Along the way, we sometimes encounter surprising examples that defy the patterns we’ve inferred.

Such apparent contradictions reveal where our understanding is still lacking, and resolving them provides valuable insight.

Consider the triangle

The humble triangle provides a famous example of an apparent contradiction. Most people think of a triangle as the shape formed by three connecting line segments, and this works well for the geometry we can draw on a sheet of paper.

However, this notion of triangle is limited. On a surface with no straight lines, like a sphere or a curly kale leaf, we need a more flexible definition.

So, to extend geometry to surfaces that aren’t flat, an open-minded mathematician might propose a new definition of a triangle: pick three points and connect each pair by the shortest path between them.

This is a great generalization because it matches the familiar definition in the familiar setting, but it also opens up new terrain. When mathematicians first studied these generalized triangles in the 19th century, they solved a millennia-old mystery and revolutionised mathematics.

The parallel postulate problem

Around 300 BC, the Greek mathematician Euclid wrote a treatise on planar geometry called The Elements. This work presented both fundamental principles and results that were logically derived from them.

One of his principles, called the parallel postulate, is equivalent to the statement that the sum of the angles in any triangle is 180°. This is exactly what you’ll measure in every flat triangle, but later mathematicians debated whether the parallel postulate should be a foundational principle or just a consequence of the other fundamental assumptions.


This puzzle persisted until the 1800s, when mathematicians realized why a proof had remained so elusive: the parallel postulate is false on some surfaces.



CC BY-ND


On a sphere, the sides of a triangle bend away from each other and the angles add up to more than 180°. On a rippled kale leaf, the sides bow in towards each other and the angle sum is less than 180°.

Triangles where the angle sum breaks the apparent rule led to the revelation that there are kinds of geometry Euclid never imagined. This is a deep truth, with applications in physics, computer graphics, fast algorithms, and beyond.

Salad days

People sometimes debate whether mathematics is discovered or invented, but both points of view feel real to those of us who study mathematics for a living. Triangles on a piece of kale are skinny whether or not we notice them, but selecting which questions to study is a creative enterprise.

Interesting questions arise from the friction between patterns we understand and the exceptions that challenge them. Progress comes when we reconcile apparent contradictions that pave the way to identify new ones.

Today we understand the geometry of two-dimensional surfaces well, so we’re equipped to test ourselves against similar questions about higher-dimensional objects.

In the past few decades we’ve learned that three-dimensional spaces also have their own innate geometries. The most interesting one is called hyperbolic geometry, and it turns out to act like a three-dimensional version of curly kale. We know this geometry exists, but it remains mysterious: in my own research field, there are lots of questions we can answer for any three-dimensional space … except the hyperbolic ones.

In higher dimensions we still have more questions than answers, but it’s safe to say that study of four-dimensional geometry is entering its salad days.

Joan Licata, Associate Professor, Mathematics, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Disease nearly wiped out sea stars on California’s Central Coast. Is the population recovering?

Mackenzie Shuman/San Luis Obsipo Tribune/TNS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Crouching low among rocky tidepools nearly completely covered with sharp-shelled mussels, California State Parks interpretive manager Robyn Chase gave out a sharp cry.

“I found one!” she yelled excitedly over to another State Parks interpreter accompanying her on a visit to Estero Bluffs State Park just north of Cayucos on Dec. 22.

Chase pointed to a huge, dinner plate-sized purple ochre sea star nestled inconspicuously in a small pool of water.

“Oh, he’s eating well,” she said, noting how the sea star was surrounded by the jet-black mussels, its preferred meal.

The ochre sea star was the first of roughly 15 sea stars found that day by Chase and her small team. It took more than an hour to locate the colorful echinoderms within the expansive tidepools at Estero Bluffs.

State Parks hosted a total of four sea star search parties at tidepool locations along San Luis Obispo County’s coast the week of Dec. 19 — including two in Montaña de Oro State Park near Los Osos and another at Hearst San Simeon State Park.

Members of the public joined State Parks interpreters as they scrounged the rocky shores for the colorful sea stars. Some snapped photos and sent them to iNaturalist, a community science social network used by scientists as a helpful database of biodiversity around the world.

At Corallina Cove in Montaña de Oro, interpreters and community members found about 14 sea stars on Dec. 20, while at Hazard Reef just up the shore, they found 144 after scouring the entire tidepool area on Dec. 21.

While the State Parks interpreters were excited to stumble upon those caches of sea stars, they expressed concerns about the state of the local population.

“It’s honestly very different now,” Chase said.

Sea star population devastated by disease

Sea stars across the West Coast have struggled since 2013 to recover from sea star wasting syndrome, which causes the invertebrates to deteriorate and lose limbs before dying.

Before 2013, scientists could count more than 50 ochre sea stars at the Estero Bluffs in an area no bigger than three semi trucks stacked next to each other. Scientists could count more than 100 in a similarly small spot at Hazard Cove within the tidepool area

Over the past decade, wasting syndrome has nearly wiped out five-armed ochre sea stars in the state and devastated their leggier cousins, sunflower sea stars.

Sunflower sea stars are now considered regionally extinct in California, although a few persist along the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan shorelines.

Scientists are still struggling to find answers to the devastation caused by the mysterious disease.

Melissa Douglas, an intertidal associate research specialist at UC Santa Cruz, has worked with a team of scientists to monitor the sea stars along the West Coast.

Their data, gathered over more than two decades across dozens of tidepool sites along the coast, have all shown essentially the same pattern: abundant populations of sea stars that plummet to near-extinction after the sea star wasting syndrome took hold.

“This is coming up on 10 years, so this is the biggest event of sea star wasting we’ve ever seen,” Douglas said.

Douglas said it’s still difficult to determine what exactly caused the disease to take such a vicious hold on the sea stars — but a few theories floating around surmise that ocean heatwaves and greater amounts of organic material in tidepools had some impact.

Douglas’s research — through the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network, or MARINe, for short — is focused on monitoring the population of sea stars and the impacts of their demise.

Unfortunately, her research has found that the ochre and sunflower sea stars simply haven’t been able to repopulate.

The population of ochre sea stars along the Central Coast appears to have pretty much flatlined since the 2013 sea star wasting syndrome event, according to MARINe’s data.

“I don’t want to say there’s no hope, but it’s not looking very good,” Douglas said. “They’re definitely not headed to recovery right now.”
Why sea stars are important marine species

Sea stars are considered keystone species. In other words, without them, ecosystems are thrown out of balance and species diversity can change drastically.

Along the Central Coast, that is particularly obvious in the mussel population along the rocky shores. The surge in the mussel population could shove other intertidal species out, such as algae, barnacles, limpets, sponges and sea slugs, Douglas said.

Sunflower sea stars were also vitally important to keeping sea urchin populations in check.

Without sunflower sea stars, the urchins have completely mowed down kelp forests in some areas, Douglas said.

Kelp forests provide important feeding grounds and shelter for various marine species, including sea otters, fish and birds, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Community can help with sea star research

Keeping tabs on the sea stars to learn how their population continues to evolve is vitally important, Douglas said, and the community can help.

Dennis Krueger recently retired from owning Kayak Horizons in Morro Bay but still loves paddling in the Morro Bay estuary.

About once a month, Krueger paddles out to the T Pier in the bay to look for sea stars, count and measure them. He sends the data to Douglas and the team at MARINe.

“I just thought, ‘well, heck, I’m out on the bay all the time and I’d love to help in any way I can,’” Krueger said. “Now I’m gathering data for people to make big decisions with.”

Over the 23 years he’s lived in Morro Bay, Krueger said he’s noticed a change in the sea star population. The species’ struggle has become more apparent since he started sending data to MARINe about four years ago, he said.

“I used to be able to see 15 to 20 sea stars when I’d take the kids out to paddle,” he said. “We’re now seeing fewer and it’s becoming more common to not see any at all.”

Sending data to MARINe is “pretty easy,” said Krueger, who underwent simple training from scientists on how to properly identify and measure the sea stars.

Anyone interested in doing similar monitoring work can contact the MARINe team at seastarwasting.org.

But even without training, community members can contribute to monitoring the sea star population along the Central Coast, Douglas said.

“If there’s a good low tide and you can head out to the tidepools to search for sea stars,” she said. “Don’t forget a camera.”

How to submit sea star observations

Find a sea star while exploring the San Luis Obispo County shoreline?

Simply snap a picture and either send it to the MARINe team at marinedb.ucsc.edu/ssd/public/observation-log/create or submit it to iNaturalist. You’ll want to know the GPS coordinates of where you found the sea star and what kind of sea star it is.

iNaturalist has a good guide on its website at inaturalist.org/guides/7857.

Your observation might just help scientists better determine how the sea star population is faring against sea star wasting syndrome in your area.

“If there’s any silver lining out of all of this, it’s been really heartwarming to see how many people are interested in sea stars and becoming involved in the research,” Douglas said.

A bat star, top right, hangs out in a tidepool at Estero Bluffs State Park north of Cayucos, California, on Dec. 22, 2022. - Mackenzie Shuman/San Luis Obsipo Tribune/TNS

2023/01/01
© The Sacramento Bee

Intensity of psychedelic experiences after taking psilocybin does not depend on body mass index, study suggests

Researchers in the United Kingdom studied whether the effects of psilocybin, a naturally occurring hallucinogenic drug, depend on the body mass index of the person, thereby requiring higher doses for the same effect in heavier people. The results showed that the overall intensity of psychedelic experiences after consuming a 25 mg dose of psilocybin was unaffected by differences in body mass indices of respondents. The study was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Psilocybin is a psychedelic drug obtained from certain sorts of fresh and dry mushrooms (“magic mushrooms”). In the human body, it acts as a serotonin type 2A (5-HT2A) receptor agonist, activating serotonin receptors on brain cells, mostly in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain. In this way, it reduces the energy needed for the brain to switch between different activity states.

Although illegal in the United States and considered a Schedule I substance by the Drug Enforcement Administration (high abuse risk, no medical use), there is a recent increase of interest for its potential use in psychiatric treatment. However, due to its legal status, research on dosing of the drug has, so far, been limited and it is unknown whether the dosage needs to be scaled to achieve the same psychedelic effect for people of different body weight or a fixed dosage can be used for everyone.

“There is already a lot of research supporting the importance of the acute experience in psilocybin-assisted therapy, and that this is not solely dependent on the dose used. The acute experience is also shaped by extra-pharmacological factors; commonly referred to as the set and setting,” explained study author Meg J. Spriggs, a research associate at the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London.

“While body weight adjusted dosing is the ‘gold standard’ in pharmacological research, it was unclear from previous research whether bodyweight adjustment is necessary in psilocybin-assisted therapy, given what we know about these extra-pharmacological factors. Here, we wanted to test whether the acute experience and outcome are impacted by a participants BMI when using a fixed 25 mg dose (a ‘therapeutic’ dose) of psilocybin.”

“As we look towards a future where psychedelic-assisted therapy may become accessible, we need to be thinking about how to facilitate safe and equitable clinical roll out,” the researcher said. “Bodyweight adjustment is standard practice in research, but it adds practical and financial complexity to standardization, validation and large-scale distribution. A greater understanding about whether fixed doses can be used will help facilitate this transition to the clinic.”

Spriggs and her colleagues analyzed data from three different studies using psilocybin. Two of the studies were clinical studies on potential use of psilocybin for treating depression and the third was a study on healthy volunteers who have never taken a psychedelic drug before aiming to examine long-term psychological and brain changes. The researchers analyzed data on the effects of a 25 mg dose of psilocybin from all three studies. The three studies included 77 participants. Average age was 43 years.

The researchers measured body weight and height of participants to calculate their body mass indexes. Body mass index is calculated by dividing the body weight of a person expressed in kilograms by the square of the person’s height in meters. It is used to indicate whether a person is underweight, normal-weight or overweight.

Participants also completed an assessment of the altered states of consciousness related to the psychedelic state they were experiencing after taking the psilocybin dose (The Altered States of Consciousness Questionnaire, ASC), of emotional breakthrough experienced during the psychedelic state (Emotional Breakthrough Inventory, EBI) and of well-being (Warwick-Edinburg Mental Well-being Scale).

“Body mass index does not predict overall intensity of the altered state, mystical experiences, perceptual changes or emotional breakthroughs during the acute experience. There was weak evidence for greater ‘dread of ego dissolution’ in participants with lower body mass index,” Spriggs and her colleagues wrote. However, further analysis suggested that even this link with body mass index disappeared when age and sex of participants are taken into account.

“While mystical-type experiences and emotional breakthroughs were strong predictors of improvements in well-being, BMI was not,” the researchers concluded.

“This helps us understand that psychedelic-assisted therapy is more than just pharmacology, it is psycho-pharmaco-therapy,” Spriggs told PsyPost. “The drug is only one aspect of the therapy ‘package,’ which also includes extensive psychological preparation before, and integration after, the dosing session which takes place in a supportive and therapeutically-oriented environment.”

This research further demonstrates that there is more than just the ratio of dose-to-bodyweight in determining the acute experience and the outcome.

“This is a great demonstration of where ‘support for the null hypothesis’ is really important. Using standard (‘frequentist’) statistical methods, the results of this study are non-significant — meaning that there is no evidence for the effect of BMI, and so the results are inconclusive. A common problem in science is that null results are often not published. Not only does this mean that the wider science community cannot learn from null findings, but it can put pressure on researchers to ‘find’ significant results if they want a study to be published.”

“Here we took a different statistical approach (Bayesian statistics) that allowed us to draw conclusions about evidence in support of the null hypothesis. i.e., we can say that there is evidence against BMI being a predictor of acute experience and outcome. So, what would typically be a null result is actually really informative. I hope that this helps people to look at science in a different way, and inspires scientist to explore new statistical approaches.”

The study results provide strong evidence that scaling psilocybin dose according to body weight is not necessary and that a fixed dosage for all persons is sufficient to achieve acute psychedelic experience. However, it also has certain limitations. Notably, only the 25 mg dosage was studied and it is possible that effects of different dosages would depend on body weight. Also, there were much more obese participants than underweight ones.

“Fixed vs bodyweight adjusted dosing also has implications for clinical applications in populations where BMI is part of the diagnostic criteria, e.g., anorexia — I am currently working on a trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for anorexia at Imperial College London,” Spriggs noted.

The study, “Body mass index (BMI) does not predict responses to psilocybin”, 

was authored by Meg J. Spriggs, Bruna Giribaldi, Taylor Lyons, Fernando E. Rosas, Laura S. Kärtner, Tobias Buchborn, Hannah M. Douglass, Leor Roseman, Christopher Timmermann, David Erritzoe, David J. Nutt, and Robin L. Carhart-Harris.


2022/12/31
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Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion suspends 'public disruption' tactics

Agence France-Presse
January 01, 2023

Extinction Rebellion got a financial boost from the band Radiohead on Tuesday when the band shared 18 previously-unreleased recordings, offering them for sale with all proceeds going to the climate campaigners. (Photo: Extinction Rebellion)

Environmental group Extinction Rebellion said on Sunday that it would no longer stage its infamous blockades of UK transport networks and will instead hold a major demonstration against government policy in April.

The activist network, formed in the UK in 2018, has regularly used civil disobedience to protest what it calls government inaction on climate change.

Activists gained notoriety for blockading train lines, airports and roads, causing chaos for commuters.

At the end of August, they blockaded London's iconic Tower Bridge.

"As we ring in the new year, we make a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic," the group said in a statement.

"This year, we prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore," it added.

While recognising "the power of disruption to raise the alarm", the activists say that the group will now focus on disrupting "the abuse of power and imbalance" by demanding politicians end fossil fuel use.

It is calling for 100,000 people to demonstrate outside the UK parliament in London on April 21.

The group's actions have infuriated large sections of the public, the Conservative government and much of the media.

Many activists have been arrested, while the government is pursuing plans to further outlaw its protest tactics.

At the same time, Extinction Rebellion has been overtaken by even more radical groups such as Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, whose activists sprayed soup on Van Gogh's masterpiece "The Sunflowers" at the National Gallery in London in October.

The only good year Trump had in business was when he sold his father's real estate empire: David Fahrenthold

Sarah K. Burris
January 01, 2023

Donald Trump, pointing at his sons Donald Trump, Jr and Eric Trump (Twitter)

New York Times reporter David Fahrenthold has spent the better part of the past six years following the financial life of former President Donald Trump, particularly when it comes to his business. Trump has claimed for decades that he's a billionaire.

A big part of the problem is that the IRS isn't fully funded and they don't have the resources to go after wealthy people who are willing to spend years in court fighting against tax problems. So many of the wealthy in America are going unchecked while poor families are facing off against the IRS.

"That is a big part of it," Fahrenthold explained. "Obviously, while Trump was president, there's a lot of other factors that were present. And it seems like they didn't do, as you said, even where they're supposed to do for presidents every year. But before he was president, he was just another rich guy with a really complicated tax structure. He's one person who owned more than 400 different entities and put them all in his taxes. Yes, this is about a lack of resources for the IRS. The IRS has been starved of resources for more than ten years. They see their job not as enforcing the law evenly or trying to make sure the world's fair, but as collecting revenue. They want to collect the most revenue they can. It seems they made the decision (that) it's easier to go after the low-hanging fruit --those of us who make less money and follow the law -- than it is to spend a lot of time trying to make sure that rich folks pay their fair share."

He went on to say that in Trump's case, "it seemed almost like even before he was president they threw up their hands and said, "Well, who can make heads or tails of this?"'

What was made clear by the Ways and Means Committee is that the IRS did not do the audits. They were under the leadership of Steve Mnuchin at the time. There was also a man overseeing the IRS that wasn't the kind of person to stand up to Donald Trump.

But it was with the information gleaned from the tax records that Fahrenthold was able to answer some of the longstanding questions about Trump's profits and losses.

"I would put what I learned into big categories. First was, as you alluded to: how much of Trump's money, taxes, accounts, were in foreign countries?" he asked. "Including countries like China, where Trump had no discernible to the outside eye — no discernible business connections. He didn't have property in China. He had no discernible business in China for several years. Still, he had an account there. I was surprised that he paid more taxes in foreign countries than in this country in several years. That was one thing."

Another startling finding he saw was just how much money Trump has overseas, not merely for his golf courses in the UK but in other places.

"The other thing was we spend all this time trying to figure out what's happening with Trump's golf courses," Fahrenthold continued. "With his hotels. Is he using the presidency to profit in those places? The one good year that he had was not due to Donald Trump at all, but it was due to Fred Trump, his now long-deceased father. In 2018, Trump sold the last pieces of his father's New York real estate empire. And got a big capital gain. It's really the only good year he had, and it came from his father. Not from himself."

Study identifies factors that influence the link between men’s body esteem and their ability to enjoy their sexuality

New research provides evidence that men’s self-evaluation of their bodies predicts their level of sexual esteem, and that this relationship is moderated by body-focused anxiety and male gender norms. The findings have been published in the journal Psychology & Sexuality.

While studies have demonstrated that having a poor body image is associated with a variety of negative outcomes, most of this research has focused on women. The authors of the new study sought to better understand negative body image among men, and were particularly interested in sexual esteem, which has been defined as “positive regard for and confidence in the capacity to experience one’s sexuality in a satisfying and enjoyable way.”

“From an interest in investigating male extremist groups, we had noticed that one extremist group in particular (‘incels’) held the collective belief that if men did not look attractive, they would not be able to find a romantic or sexual partner,” said study author David Hattie, a member of the O.R.G.A.S.M Research Lab who conducted the research as part of his honors thesis for his BA in Psychology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

“Particularly fascinating was how hyper-focused incels were on specific parts of the body; in particular, wrist size and skull shape could be arbiters of inability to find relational or sexual connections. We then determined to interrogate the connection between men’s body image and sexual satisfaction in the general population.”

The researchers recruited a sample of 298 male participants. The average age of the sample was 32.34 years. The participants completed a battery of questionnaires, including one known as the Body Esteem Questionnaire-Revised. The participants indicated how they felt about various body parts (e.g. arms, chest) and physical characteristics (e.g. energy level, physical coordination) on a 5-point scale.

Their responses were totaled into three separate dimensions: upper body strength, physical condition, and sexual attractiveness. Hattie and his colleagues found that all three dimensions of male body esteem were positively associated with sexual esteem. Body esteem related to the wrist, nose, jaw, and height were also associated with sexual esteem, which was “a particularly novel finding not reported in previous literature,” the researchers said.

In other words, those who had positive feelings about their body were more likely to agree with statements such as “I would rate my sexual skill quite highly” and disagree with statements such as “I sometimes doubt my sexual competence.”

“However, this relationship was complicated by incorporating other variables,” Hattie told PsyPost. “For instance, we found that body image anxiety negatively moderated the relationship between sexual attractiveness and sexual esteem; the strength of the relationship between sexual attractiveness and sexual esteem was weakest when body image anxiety was high, suggesting that increased body image anxiety has a negative impact on men’s sexual esteem.”

Those with a high level of body image anxiety agree with statements such as “I don’t like my partner to see me completely naked during sexual activity,” “During sexual activity I try to hide certain areas of my body,” and “I am self-conscious about my body during sexual activity.”

The participants also completed a questionnaire in which they reported the extent to which they agreed with a variety of statements regarding manhood. The questionnaire assessed male role norms related to restrictive emotionality, self-reliance through mechanical skills, negativity towards sexual minorities, avoidance of femininity, importance of sex, toughness, and dominance.

In an unexpected finding, the relationship between upper body strength and sexual esteem was not moderated by male role norm endorsement.

“Higher conformity to male gender norms did not impact the relationship between upper body strength and sexual esteem,” Hattie said. “We hypothesized that a macho/muscular body type would impact men’s sexual esteem especially for men who endorse male gender norms and we did not find this result. In hindsight however, perhaps this result is unsurprising, given recent trends of men’s body image shifting from a muscular ideal to a leaner/toned ideal.”

The relationship between sexual attractiveness and sexual esteem was strongest when male role norm endorsement was high. In contrast, the relationship between physical condition and sexual esteem was strongest when male role norm endorsement was low.

“Higher conformity to male gender norms had a negative impact on the relationship between men’s physical condition and sexual esteem,” Hattie told PsyPost. “One theory we had about this result was that men who conform to stereotypically masculine body types may feel pressure to maintain physical fitness to enjoy their sexuality, while men who are less likely to conform to male gender norms place more emphasis on other factors that contribute to their sexual esteem.”

“Collectively, our findings suggest that clinical and sexuality education programs should consider both the positive and negative influences of men’s body image in influencing their sexual satisfaction and esteem,” Hattie said.

The findings held even after the researchers controlled for overall levels of sexual activity and precarious manhood beliefs (or the belief that one’s status as a “man” is hard to earn but easy to lose). But as with all research, the study includes some caveats.

“There is always a need to investigate how the relationship between body esteem and sexual esteem influences other groups of peoples besides men,” Hattie explained. Demographic variables such as race, gender, or country of origin may all influence body image and sexual esteem in differing ways. Additionally, there is still work to be done exploring the relationship between functional (as opposed to aesthetic) body image issues and sexuality, especially for individuals with disabilities.”

“Body image is an ever-evolving concept; although rates of body dissatisfaction may differ among men, women, and non-binary individuals, negative body image in men can contribute to long-term issues such overexercising, depression, loneliness, social comparison, sexual dissatisfaction, and disordered eating. We believe that men should be given a space to discuss and process the impacts that negative body image has on their sexuality in both therapy, educational settings, and within society overall.”

The study, “The Effects of Body Esteem Dimensions on Sexual Esteem in Men“, was authored by David M. Hattie, Flora Oswald, and Cory L. Pedersen.

2023/01/01
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A combination of severe depression and conspiratorial beliefs is strongly associated with support for the January 6 riot, study finds



In a series of two studies, researchers examined the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and depression. Their findings indicate that depression is positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Additionally, a combination of severe depression and conspiratorial beliefs was found to be strongly associated with support for political violence. Based on their results, the authors of the new research argue that reducing depression could substantially reduce support for political violence in the United States.

“The last several years in American politics have unfortunately introduced concern about political violence,” said study author James N. Druckman, the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and author of “Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments.”

“At the same time, the pandemic exacerbated rates of depressive symptoms such that roughly 30% of the population reported such symptoms. We were interested in understanding whether there were conditions under which the two relate to one another – with a very strong conviction that any such relationship is conditional and nuanced.”

“Put another way, we are very sensitive to not stigmatizing those who suffer from depression,” Druckman explained. “We thus developed a theory that suggests the relationship depends on conspiratorial thinking and/or a participatory disposition/efficacy.”

For their initial research, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Druckman and his colleagues analyzed three waves of data from the COVID States Project, a nationwide survey of behaviors and attitudes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their sample included 55,212 individuals from the United States.

The participants were asked to assess the accuracy of three prominent conspiracies related to the pandemic: that the coronavirus was created as a weapon in a Chinese lab, that COVID-19 vaccines contain the lung tissue of aborted fetuses, and that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips that can track people. They also completed the Patient Health Questionnaire, a common screening tool used to assess depression in primary care settings.

In line with previous research, Druckman and his colleagues found several social and political variables that were associated with endorsement of the COVID-19 conspiracies. Evangelical Christians, Republicans, and conservatives were more likely to view the conspiracies as accurate, while women and older individuals were less likely to view the conspiracies as accurate.

The researchers also found a positive association between depression scores and conspiracy beliefs. In other words, those who experienced more depressive symptoms were more likely to view the COVID-19 conspiracies as accurate compared to those with fewer depressive symptoms.

Interestingly, the association between depression and conspiracy beliefs was stronger among White participants, men, those with higher incomes, and those who were more educated. The association was also stronger among those who had COVID-19 personally or had someone diagnosed with COVID-19 in their household. Having greater social support, in contrast, weakened the association between depression and conspiracy beliefs.

“Overall, our results highlight substantial heterogeneities in the relationship between depression and conspiracy beliefs. The connection appears strong among those with more advantaged status and among those who have challenging experiences and/or lack support in coping with such experiences,” the researchers wrote.

In a subsequent paper, Druckman and his colleagues built upon their findings by examining support for political violence and reactions to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The researchers reached out to individuals who had completed the November 2020 wave of the COVID States Project. A total of 2,044 of these individuals completed a follow-up survey in January 2021.

In November, the participants were asked the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statement: “If it became clear to you that the 2020 presidential election was not conducted fairly, would you approve or disapprove of other people who reacted by using violence.” They also reported whether they had participated in at least one of six political actions in the past six months, such as volunteering for a candidate or posting about politics on social media.

In January, the participants were again asked about their support for political violence. In addition, they indicated whether they supported or opposed the storming of the Capitol building.

The researchers found that conspiratorial beliefs were associated with support for violence and support for the January 6 riots among those suffering from depression. Political participation was also associated with support for violence and support for the January 6 riots among those suffering from depression. This was true even after statistically accounting for the effects of support for Donald Trump and other factors.

“We found the effects are much stronger for men,” Druckman noted. “In retrospect, this makes sense given men react to depression differently and view political participation differently.”

A person who was both severely depressed and conspiratorial was 13 times more likely to support the storming of the Capitol compared to the typical baseline participant, the researchers found.

The findings indicate “that issues of health in general and mental health in particular have political implications,” he told PsyPost. “There are thus political, as well as social and health reasons, to invest in treatment for mental health.”

But the researchers emphasized that depression on its own did not appear to increase support for violence — it only did so in combination with conspiracy beliefs and/or a participatory disposition. Those who were moderately or severely depressed but were not conspiratorial or politically involved were “at or near 0” in their support for violence, suggesting that in some circumstances depression can have a demobilizing effect.

“The relationship is contingent, and commentators should not simplify it by suggesting those who suffer from depressive symptoms necessarily act in particular ways,” Druckman said.

As with all research, the new findings include some caveats.

“Our findings are based on observational data,” Druckman explained. “It would be difficult, although not impossible, to document a causal relationship. Also, more work can be done to isolate the psychological mechanism through which depression along with conspiratorial thinking and/or a participatory disposition relates to support for political violence. We suggest it may be a desire for control; anger also could play a role. Our hope is that scholars explore the relationship between health and politics more.”

The study, “Depressive symptoms and conspiracy beliefs“, was authored by Jon Green, James N. Druckman, Matthew A. Baum, David Lazer, Katherine Ognyanova, and Roy H. Perlis.

2022/12/30

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